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Office of the President -- Barber B. Conable (President, 1986 - 1991)

Records of President Barber B. Conable

  • WB IBRD/IDA EXC-11
  • Subfondo
  • 1986 - 1991 (predominant)

Barber B. Conable's term as President was noted for the major reorganization of the Bank he directed in 1987 and the emphasis on poverty reduction as a central mission of the Bank. He identified environmental protection as an important goal, culminating in the Bank joining with the UN Development Program and the UN Environment Program to establish the Global Environment Facility in 1991. Conable supported an increased role for women in development and he appointed a woman, Marianne Haug, to his senior staff. Broad political changes occurred in Eastern Europe during his tenure, and he maintained extensive liaisons with international organizations including the increasingly influential NGO community. Conable also authorized the project to write a history of the Bank; Brookings Institution was given the contract for the study which resulted in the two volume The World Bank: Its First Half Century. Conable gave the authors access to his Presidential files, and the use of some of the files by the Brookings team is noted in the series descriptions.

The records of President and his staff are extensive. The minutes of his President's Council reveal the mechanisms of Bank management. The usual Annual Meeting files are supplemented by his country files and the records of his travels around the globe. The two series of liaison files show his political skills with varied constituencies.

The records of the Office of the President also include separate series of records of the Executive Counselor to the President, J. William Stanton; the Executive Assistant, Marianne Haug; and the Special Assistant, Anapum Khanna. The file of Conable's Executive Assistant, Jennifer A. Volk, on the lunches between Conable and Michel Camdessus, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is a separate series, while within the President's files on travel and Annual Meetings are other files that Volk maintained.